Who Is Holding Up the Internet? Open Source, Data & the People Behind Your Phone

​Every time your phone shows the right time, opens a photo or loads a website, it relies on open source software. Much of that software is looked after by a surprisingly small number of people, often unpaid and working in their free time.

At this meetup, we’ll gather around the data story “The people holding up the internet” (from sheets.works). The piece digs into the history of the code behind billions of devices and asks a simple question: who actually keeps it running?

What we’ll talk about:

- How much of our digital infrastructure depends on just one or two maintainers
- What can go wrong when critical projects have no backup, no funding and no recognition, from burnout to security incidents
- Why money for open source tends to show up only after something breaks, and who gets left out
- How the authors turned raw commit histories into a clear, human visual story, and what we can learn from that as data people
- What we can do about it as developers, companies and community members

Whether you write Python every day, are curious about open source, or just like a good data visualisation, you’re welcome. No prior knowledge needed.

There will be time for discussion, questions and mingling.

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​This is a women- and non-binary targeted event